Tensions High Along Kurdish-Arab Line

Published: October 23, 2010

The new trove of documents released by WikiLeaks portrays the long history of tensions between Kurds and Arabs in the north of Iraq and reveals the fears of some American units about what might happen after American troops leave the country by the end of 2011.

“Without strong and fair influence, likely from a third party, these tensions may quickly turn to violence after the U.S. forces withdrawal,” warned a Sept. 28, 2009, field report.

Experts have long watched the tensions in the region with worry. Their main fear is not that senior Kurdish officials will seek a confrontation with the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad. The main interest of the political leadership, many experts say, is making sure the oil-rich region continues to grow economically.

Rather, it is that local Kurdish and Arab politicians and security officials may take matters into their own hands if crucial disputes remain unsettled, particularly after the departure of American forces, which have regularly worked behind the scenes to head off confrontations.

Kurds and Arabs are at odds over power-sharing arrangements in the Kirkuk region, the degree of federalism that should be allowed in the Iraqi state, the terms of a new oil law and territorial disputes. Those disputes have been complicated by the fact that American forces initially welcomed the presence of Kurdish troops, the pesh merga, in some parts of northern Iraq to help fend off insurgents.

Relations have been so fraught that Gen. Ray Odierno, who recently left his post as the senior American commander in Iraq, established a series of checkpoints, maintained by American, Iraqi and Kurdish soldiers, to head off confrontations, either accidental or planned.

Obama administration officials have voiced hopes that the Kurds’ participation in a new governing coalition will foster long-deferred compromises and lead to the gradual integration of pesh merga fighters into Iraq’s army. But little headway has been made on Kurdish-Arab issues in recent years. The administration is also planning to open embassy branch offices in the cities of Mosul and Kirkuk, which would enable American diplomats to focus on Arab and Kurdish issues even after American forces depart.

The reports disclosed by WikiLeaks document a long history of tensions, which insurgents from Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia, a Sunni Arab extremist group, have sought to exploit.

A Sept. 27, 2008, report showed how violence could erupt even when officials on both sides were trying to keep tensions in check. After Iraqi police officers near Khanaqin, in Diyala Province, arrested and roughed up a member of a Kurdish intelligence organization, a local Kurdish leader went to a police station to obtain his release.

The prisoner was let go, but an “ensuing verbal altercation” led to shots being fired and the death of a pesh merga fighter.

A report two months later described a more calculated assault: The planting of a roadside bomb in another northern area.

“The Arabs of that district hate the IP’s there because their police chief is a Kurd,” who had links to Kurdish intelligence, noted a Nov. 22, 2008, report, using the military’s abbreviation for the Iraqi police.

Insurgents have repeatedly sought to stir up trouble between the two sides. On Dec. 11, 2008, a suicide bomber, wearing a vest filled with explosives, blew himself up in a restaurant near Kirkuk that was patronized by Kurdish and Arab officials.

“This attack was likely intended to intimidate the leaders and to dissuade future meetings of political and religious leaders attempting to unite the province,” the field report noted.

The report on a particularly tense episode in May 2009 provides a unusual glimpse at the role American military personnel and civilians have played in trying to avert sectarian violence.

Atheel al-Nujaifi, a Sunni Arab and the newly elected governor of Nineveh Province, was already a polarizing figure for the Kurds, and tensions grew when he proclaimed on May 7 that he planned to visit a hang-gliding festival at Bashiqa. This is a small town northeast of Mosul, in Nineveh Province, but which the Kurds have long claimed.

Two days later, a liaison officer from the Kurdish regional government told Brig. Gen. Robert B. Brown, the deputy American military commander for northern Iraq, that if Mr. Nujaifi “traveled into Kurdish controlled area, there would be a potential incident,” the May report noted.

In an effort to head off a confrontation, Alexander M. Laskaris, the head of the State Department’s provincial reconstruction team in Mosul, called the governor and warned him against making the trip, which did not appear to sway Mr. Nujaifi.

As the festival approached, American soldiers from the Third Brigade Combat Team, First Cavalry Division went to inspect the road to the event. Officially, the pesh merga fighters and Iraqi soldiers shared the common goal of thwarting attacks by insurgents and terrorists, but now they appeared to have squared off like two opposing armies.

Pesh merga fighters at a checkpoint on the road to Bashiqa said that they had been ordered to shoot the governor if he tried to pass. Iraqi soldiers, who had their own checkpoint nearby, reported that they had been ordered to fire on the pesh merga if they shot at the governor, the report noted.

By this time, the issue had been brought to the attention of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, who also sought to head off trouble. Mr. Maliki ordered the Iraqi military command in the province not to provide security for the trip, apparently calculating that this would prompt the governor to cancel the visit.

None of that seemed to stop Mr. Nujaifi, who arranged for the local police to protect him.

Finally, a face-saving solution was found: the minister of youth and sports in Baghdad canceled the festival. While that solved the immediate problem, the underlying issues remained. As the May 8 report cautioned: “Recent reporting illustrates increased potential for ethnic tensions.” Read the Document »

A version of this article appeared in print on October 24, 2010, on page A15 of the New York edition.